Basketball
- NBA –
- Los Angeles Lakers defeat the Philadelphia 76ers, 4 games to 1 in the NBA Finals. The Lakers only loss in the postseason comes in Game 1 of the Finals, which the 76ers win in overtime.
- October 30 - Michael Jordan returns to the National Basketball Association with the Washington Wizards after 3½ years (the Wizards lose 93-91 to the New York Knicks).
- NCAA Men's Basketball Championship –
- Duke wins 82-72 over Arizona
- WNBA Finals –
- Los Angeles Sparks win 2 games to 0 over the Charlotte Sting, earning the franchise's first championship
- Euroleague Final:
- In the first Euroleague to be operated by ULEB, Kinder Bologna defeats TAU Cerámica 3–2 in the best-of-five series.
- Suproleague Final:
- In the only edition of the rival FIBA-sponsored competition, Maccabi Tel Aviv defeats Panathinaikos 81–67 in the one-off final.
- Chinese Basketball Association finals:
- Bayi Rockets defeat Shanghai Sharks, 3 games to 1
- National Basketball League (Australia) Finals:
- Wollongong Hawks defeated the Townsville Crocodiles 2-1 in the best-of-three final series.
- After a season of conflict between ULEB and FIBA, the two bodies settle their feud, with the Suproleague merging into the Euroleague.
Read more about this topic: 2001 In Sports
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)